For The Record
by S.R.H. Fade
Summary: In the court that is the world, there are only three types of people: Those who stand and fight, those who run, and those who witness.


Spark Brushel was, according to Miles Edgeworth, a witness. "In the court that is the world, there are only three types of people: Those who stand and fight, those who run, and those who witness," end quote. But the word "witness" wasn't quite _succinct_ enough, so Spark decided that he was "a lone observer of the world," which earned him a glare from whom Miles Edgeworth would have labeled a "fighter." The "fighter" (that is, Apollo Justice) called him a "freelance journalist," but Spark knew he was wrong, of course. He was a man with a dream.

He'd always been an honest man. And perhaps that was why it had always been his dream to tell the world the truth, lay bare the deepest and darkest secrets for public scrutiny. Unravel the bandages and reveal the scars, roll up the sleeves and show the burns. Scoops—_secrets_ were always what he was after.

Perhaps because Spark never had any secrets of his own. He had lived an unremarkable life, devoid of drama and mystery, and "people never change," end quote, so devoid it remained. Instead, he dove into the very essence of lying and wrapped it around him, reveling in the secrets of those around him. In sniffing them out, clutching them close, polishing and embellishing them with a toothbrush or four, and then letting them free to the world.

Years later, though, when there was a witness stand and a defense bench between them, he'd find sleeves already rolled up, nothing hiding beneath them, and eyes that, Spark would wager his mints on, didn't read the newspaper for the housewife thrills and dramas. They looked past everything and sought the truth. Just the truth. Because it mattered to that fighter who knew it, more than it mattered to Spark.

But before that witness stand and defense bench and rolled-up sleeves, each secret he was given—each secret Zak gave him—he treasured.

"She vanished—like a magic trick," end quote.

And:

"This is a magician's business," end quote.

Spark wrote seven reviews trashing five plays and two magic shows (not the Gramaryes', of course) to get the acid out of his system after he heard that, and the trash can under his desk almost overflowed with the wrappers of mint candies. Because he wanted to _know_ what was behind that magician smile.

Zak had gotten that smile from the stage. Spark could smell the secrets (and occasionally the alcohol) in his laugh, too. And even if he didn't know where he'd gotten that smile then, he would, because he would see it on Thalassa, before she died; and on Lamiroir, before she lived; and the piano man in the Borscht Bowl Club, before the truth didn't simply remain, but was known; and the magician in the Wonder Bar, until God knew when.

But, in the end, Spark had always been an honest man, and he tried to keep clean—that is, as much as he loved secrets, he couldn't stand that secretive smile. And as much as he loved a scoop, too, he felt almost dirty afterwards, like there was bacteria in his brain, corroding his morals. So he ate mints. And when he'd first met Shadi Enigmar, he'd eaten so many mints he'd ended up feeling dirty _and_ sick.

"Relax," Shadi said. "And I didn't steal those. Just in case you were wondering."

Spark was a young man, then. Fresh out of college with a journalist degree. "Young Man Who Doesn't Know How To Smile, Stage Smile or Otherwise," end quote. Back then, he was naïve, with too much seriousness and not enough deodorant for his own good. He was too much like his uncle's old college friend, a man named Magnifi Gramarye, who would later become the most famed magician in the industry. "I stuck up for you," he complained. "I stuck up for you because I thought you hadn't done it, and you _had_."

"The cops know what they're doing," agreed Shadi. "Or maybe I've just been at this too long?" He smirked, not the smile he'd wear years from this moment, but an legitimate (if bitter) expression of humor. "I guess shoplifting only works the first couple of times."

Letting out a whining noise, Spark said, "It shouldn't work at all."

"It'd be no fun if it didn't work sometimes."

Spark could feel distaste spreading in his mouth despite the mint. Just a few more hours, and then either his father, or his uncle, or Magnifi, or _somebody_ he knew would come and bail him out. Just a few more hours. With this thought, he let the silence grow, broken only by the low murmurs of the guards beyond the bars and the shuffling of other thugs locked away in the holding cell for the night. Like Spark. Except he wasn't a thug. It was all a mistake.

"I'd apologize for getting you caught up in this," said Shadi, breaking the silence, "but you kinda plucked yourself, smothered yourself in barbecue sauce, and flung yourself on the grill, old boy. Of course they're gonna think you're my accomplice if you say things like that."

Spark said nothing.

"Geez..." Shadi pushed a large hand through his hair, then held out a mint. "Want another?"

Spark shook his head, his morals and honesty still sulky.

"C'mon, old boy, you're sweating entire buckets. I'm drowning here. Eat it."

Pressing his lips together, Spark swiped the mint and unwrapped it carelessly, throwing the wrapper back at Zak.

He looked down at the little paper resting against his faded sneakers as if he'd never seen a candy wrapper before, then picked it up and examined it in the shallow fluorescent lights. "Look," he whispered, like it was the Eighth Wonder of the World, or the deepest secret of the very Earth itself. "Look at _that_."

Spark just looked at him and wondered if he was deranged, his jittery nerves already jangling against each other. He could see the headlines now: "Street Thug Strangles Innocent Inmate With Candy Wrapper," end quote.

"You're not looking," said Shadi.

"I'm looking."

"Look closer."

So Spark looked closer—not that Shadi gave him a choice, after all, since he all but shoved it in front of his nose. It was unremarkable, really. A flat piece of paper, pink on one side and white on the other, crinkled with the first signs of wear, tear, and dirt from the prison floor. There was a quote on the inside, a fortune-cookie gimmick to help people think they got their money's worth: _No matter who knows it, the truth remains._

"I'm looking closer," said Spark nervously.

"Not close enough," said Shadi, and with a quick flip of his fingers, the wrapper slid out of sight and vanished.

Spark blinked, and then blinked again when Shadi showed the back of his hand, the in-betweens of his fingers, even rolling up the sleeve to show nothing but skin and ugly cigarette burns, and the wrapper was still gone. "How did you...?" Spark began.

Shadi just grinned and laughed, and that was perhaps the only time Spark saw him smile in earnest. He lifted his foot, revealing the crushed candy wrapper underneath. "I just let it fall behind my arm," he explained. "Sometimes the greatest feats have the simplest reasons."

That wasn't the first time Shadi made something disappear that night. He had a talent for magic, apparently, despite his tendency to get into fistfights and his wardrobe of tattered jeans and t-shirts that Spark usually saw worn by street thugs (although that was hardly false advertising). Right under the guard's nose, Shadi magicked every spare coin, paperclip, shoelace, and piece of lint the inmates and Spark had in their pockets to nothing. He crumpled handkerchiefs and hair ties together and produced entire decks of cards, then let Spark shuffle the deck and named every card Spark drew without looking. When he stood and took a bow, he swept his hat from his head and removed the four wallets inside, handing them back to their respective owners, all of whom hadn't even noticed the disappearance. Indeed: "Prison Improv Attraction Better Than Most Professional Performances," end quote.

But for the record, Spark had meant it as a joke when he told Shadi that he was good enough to join Troupe Gramarye.

The last thing to disappear that night, in a great feat that lacked the great glamour that should have accompanied it, was Shadi himself. Spark didn't see Shadi again until the day Zak Gramarye fled Courtroom No. 7, leaving everything that had made him Zak behind. Something in that prison had made Shadi leave behind what had seemed was going to be a career of petty crime, of magicking cheap rental video and bags of Cheetos from corner stores, and start a whole new life.

It was certainly a great feat, but Spark couldn't tell if the answer was as simple as Shadi had promised.

While he never saw Shadi Enigmar, he saw Zak Gramarye almost every week until then: giving shows, signing autographs, posing with his fellow Gramaryes on pictures, posters, bulletin boards, magazines, stamps, and every once and a while, mint candy bags. Never in person, though. Spark officially met Zak Gramarye when Spark, having known Magnifi Gramarye like a second uncle for most of his life, asked for a teensy-tiny favor and landed a one-on-one interview with Zak, the majority of which was spent in Troupe Gramarye's basement. There, Zak effortlessly pulled off trick after trick and Spark tried his darndest best to find the secret behind it; and when he'd finally given up, Spark scratched his head with his handy toothbrush and whined, "So wait just a second here—what's the secret? Or make that two seconds, I need a pen—"

"No, no no no," said Zak, and he laughed long and loud. "A magician never reveals his secrets."

Spark was literally so surprised he forgot to react, so for a long moment, he simply stared at Zak, eyes blinking behind his glasses like a fish does from a fish tank. _Then_ he remembered, and Zak only chuckled and covered his ears as Spark exploded: "WHAAAAAT?"

"A magician never—"

"I know what you _said_! But you're killing me! You're _killing_ me! What's the point of the interview if I can't—you can't just—_but the scoop_—"

Well. The rest of _that_ particular conversation hadn't been much, just Spark panicking and Zak laughing. The long and short of it was that Spark couldn't make a story out of _that_. But he could make a friend—or acquaintance, really, he told Magnifi later. "Acquaintance Never Too Close And Never Too Far," end quote. "That's how I like people," Zak had said once. "That's how you're supposed to like people." He had held out his hand, like he could hold an invisible person at an arm's length, and the sleeves rode up his arm just enough to show the cigarette burns ghosting up the inside of his forearm. But then he'd put his hands on his hips in that traditional I'm-Zak-Gramarye-so-bite-me pose that adorned the posters and autograph books, the insides of his forearms turned away from the camera, and laughed.

Which is why Spark could barely believe it when he found himself writing a six-inch column about Zak and Thalassa Gramarye's wedding.

It wasn't big, or flashy, or anything like a Troupe Gramarye show. There wasn't a stage or a spotlight in sight. Actually, it was a private event. But with no audience or flashes or spotlights, Thalassa and Zak downright shined. It was just Zak's arm around Thalassa's waist, her hand on his wrist, and smiles on both their faces wider than the world. Wider than any words Spark could find. Hands touching, arms linked, fingers laced, her cheek on his shoulder—they were practically attached at the hip. Other than the breathtaking minutes in which Thalassa walked down the aisle to her groom, Spark couldn't remember a moment when Thalassa was further away from Zak than six inches, let alone an arm's length.

(And Valant, in the corner. Just... Valant.)

Considering the privateness of the entire event, none of this was for the record—the only reason why Spark was there in the first place was because Magnifi had invited him as a friend. So for the record, Spark wasn't there to write a story on anything. Off the record, he most certainly was.

But then Spark thought that maybe their smiles were what they truly felt, not reflections of the audience's glee imposed on their faces, and Spark had to cede that there was really nothing to make a story about. What could he say? That they were happy? That Thalassa hadn't just claimed she was over her ex-husband, but officially was? "No, Really, Sherlock?", end quote. Spark dropped the story in disgust, turning his pen to a review of the Wonder Bar. "No matter who knows it, the truth remains," end quote.

What _was_ something to make a story about was the day Zak wasn't there for the birth of his daughter. But on the other hand, Zak holing himself up in Spark's apartment's kitchen, letting his cell phone ring and ring and ring from hospital nurses' endless calls (who were doubtlessly wondering where the father of the child was), and drinking himself stupid was an event that even Spark agreed should be kept off the record. Mostly because Zak punched Spark right below the cheekbone and yelled incoherently until Spark swore up and down that none of this would ever see the light of a newspaper. The swollen cheek made it a little hard to chew mints, but he managed it somehow, and the rest of the night was spent with Spark hiding from his own houseguest and Zak drowning himself in anything with alcohol.

It was when Zak had passed out on the counter that Spark tried dragging him to the couch, failed under Zak's greater size and bulk, eventually resigned himself to letting Zak sleep on the counter, and saw those cigarette marks on his arms. It looked like the cigarettes had been shoved into the skin, melting the flesh just enough to create a small crater ringed with telltale burn marks, intentional malice, and a long history. He poked it with a toothbrush, but didn't bother further. Some dirt never washed off.

Trucy Gramarye was a bright child even at her young age, a fact that was more than clear to Spark, even though he'd had only met her once. "Child of Magic," end quote. But beyond that meeting, in which Zak held his daughter's hand and gave her all the hugs he could (as if he hadn't turned tail and ran the day she was born), Spark barely saw Zak at all for five years. Magnifi was no help in arranging meetings, and Zak rarely answered his phone—he just let it ring and ring and ring. Of course, his silence entailed that Zak no longer came to Spark's apartment, for which Spark was glad, considering what had happened the last time.

But six years after the last time Zak stood outside Spark's doorstep, Spark heard the doorbell ring, opened the door, and nearly shut it in Zak's face again. They were only acquaintances, not too far and not too close, and it really wouldn't hurt to give him one excuse or another—his dishwasher broke and was spewing bubbles, his mother had broken her hip, there was a pipe bomb in his couch, his doctor has told him he couldn't get punched on the cheekbone or he'd suffer an epileptic seizure and instantaneously die. But then Zak said, "I'm not here to get drunk this time," and from the way his voice dragged tiredly over the syllables from something that was past remedy of a bottle, Spark believed him.

Two hours later, Zak was drunk.

"She vanished," he muttered. "She vanished. Vanished."

In another room, Spark dialed Magnifi's number, holding his breath until he picked up on the fourth ring. "Hello?"

"Hello, hello! Long time no see!"

"Brushel?"

"Vanished," mumbled Zak into his beer.

Spark grinned wide with his horsey teeth, even though Magnifi couldn't see him. "Yep! Just got a quick question. Have a moment?"

"I do," said Magnifi.

"So," said Spark, tapping his head with a toothbrush, "Zak's acting a little strange."

From the kitchen: "Vanished. _Vanished_."

There was a pause on Magnifi's end, then in a voice too stern: "What of it?"

"H-H-Hey, no need to be so, er, harsh about it! I was just—"

"This is a magician's business."

Spark jumped as Zak smacked the counter with his bottle, and Spark let out a shrill, nervous laugh. "O-Oh r-r-r-really?"

"Leave him alone," instructed Magnifi. "What's he doing?"

Spark glanced at Zak, his hands fisted on the kitchen table, unable to sit up straight and eyelids drooping, the beer bottles cluttered so thick Spark could barely see the linoleum counter underneath. "...Um."

"People never change," growled Magnifi, and then he hung up with a _click_.

"Vanished!" The shattering noise of a breaking bottle ensued. "_Vanished, goddammit_!"

Spark hid in the laundry room for the next half hour, and when he emerged, Zak was still there, a broken bottle littered around his loosely-clutched hands. "…She… vanished?" asked Spark, because even though reasons for these great feats were never simple, Spark always had and always would want to know.

"She vanished," echoed Zak. "She vanished—like a magic trick."

Then, through the blur of alcohol, grief, and something else that Spark The Witness And Acquaintance could never truly perceive, he smiled _that_ smile, reflecting mirth Zak couldn't possibly feel.

"And a magician never reveals his secrets."

That's what it had been, Spark would think when he watched Vera Misham emerge, eyes wide and hands shaking, from the hospital doors; Apollo at her side, his sharp eyes trained on Vera's careful steps, while Trucy bounced down the sidewalk with her own smile wide on her face; and Phoenix Wright stood perfectly still on the entrance stairs with his cell phone in his hand. It had been a magician's secret, a remaining truth, and a last testament to Magnifi's words: _People never change._

True to his word, Zak tucked the secret of Thalassa's "vanishment" up his sleeve and kept it there with the rest of his tricks, kept it until the moment when Zak Gramarye fled Courtroom No. 7 and the last Spark saw of him was the white jacket of Shadi Enigmar melting into the crowded LA streets. He would have gone after him, but Magnifi was dead (_murdered_! Spark remembered with something vaguely like horror and fascination), Phoenix Wright had been disbarred, Trucy abandoned, and there was a scoop to be salvaged from this mess. "He Who Sees It Wins, But He Who Says It Wins Bigger," end quote. After all, Spark lived in a man-sees-dog-eat-dog-and-writes-about-it world.

Yet there were no interviews to be gotten from dead men, nor men who "didn't exist," nor men who had all but vanished from the face of the Earth, taking their last client's daughter with them.

So Spark went after Miles Edgeworth.

(Everybody has a memory that changes their life forever. Memories of a powerful book, of a spectacular piano performance, of a beloved dog. Memories of an attempted kidnapping, of a heartless mother, of a bleak orphanage, of a father's death, of a class trial.

Spark's memory was Miles Edgeworth.)

He wasn't happy to see Spark; in fact, the glare he sent him through his bangs made Spark flinch and hastily polish his glasses with a shaking, forced grin. But he did his best, and introduced himself as any reporter should, and then tore into the heart of the situation:

"Defense attorney Phoenix Wright, your old defense attorney and someone you seem to be well-acquainted with, has been disbarred for the forgery of evidence in a court of law. So tell me, for the record," said Spark with his usual toothy smile, "why you're getting on a plane to Europe?"

Edgeworth eyed Spark, and said nothing as he gripped his suitcase tighter and strode down the hall. Spark wasn't entirely sure he had a direction other than "away from Brushel," really. Spark could work with that.

"Aren't you worried?" he prodded, uncapping a pen with his teeth. "Or feeling particularly inclined to put in a good word to defend your former defense attorney? Or!—or perhaps just the opposite?" He could almost smell the scoop now, and his nose flared as he examined his arm for a suitable place to write his latest note.

Edgeworth still said nothing. It turned out he had a direction in mind after all, and a security checkpoint came into view around the corner. Spark frowned; he wouldn't be able to follow him past the checkpoint, and Spark turned back to Edgeworth with renewed enthusiastic determination.

"'Best Friend and Rival Prosecutor In Denial of Friendship Betrayal,' end quote."

Edgeworth said nothing. The checkpoint guards looked up as the sound of Edgeworth's shoes clacking against the floor approached.

"'Friendship Forged, Deceit Revealed,' end quote! Am I right, or am I right?"

Edgeworth didn't even look at him.

"Aw, c'mon! Don't be like that!" Spark pleaded, stepping directly in front of Edgeworth, brandishing his arms. "I can't make a scoop out of silence!"

There was a pause, in which Edgeworth studied him with those sharp, steely eyes, then sidestepped Spark and walked faster.

"I need something to work with!"

Magnifi had died, taking the secret of Thalassa, his own daughter, to his grave. Zak had vanished like the woman he'd loved, taking the secret of Magnifi's death with him before he shed Zak like snake does skin. Phoenix Wright and Trucy Gramarye, similarly abandoned, had sunk into the unknown during the fray, taking the secret of Zak's vanishment into the smoke.

"Something!" Spark complained, struggling to keep up with Edgeworth's pace. "Anything!"

And now Edgeworth was striding towards the threshold, about to slip away and take the secret of Phoenix Wright with him.

"I can't report the truth if I don't know what it is!"

Edgeworth hesitated.

Stopped.

Turned.

Looked.

"People never change," he said.

Spark, taken aback, missed that glorious moment that any reporter with better skill than he would have pounced on, and gaped instead. "Ehh… What?"

"In the court that is the world, there are only three types of people," said Edgeworth. "Those who stand and fight, those who run, and those who witness.

"And people never change," he repeated. "Ever."

In the wake of this statement, Spark could find no proper response. He just watched, eyes blinking as if trying to see through water, as Edgeworth ruffled through his jacket pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper, on which he meticulously scratched out the numbers every reporter dreams of seeing from their interviewee. "I'll be using a different number in Germany," he said. "The phone I used here will be disconnected. Use this if you need to reach me."

Spark almost didn't grab that golden opportunity Edgeworth was offering to him until a voice in the back of his head told him _you dolt take the paper_ and his hand shot forward, a delighted, hungry grin plastered all over his face.

"Now _stop following me_," snapped Edgeworth, and that said, he strode through security without a backwards glance.

But two days later, when Spark smoothed out the creases of that paper and dialed, it just kept ringing. Edgeworth didn't pick up. Voicemail never kicked in. Just kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing.

In the court that is the world, Miles Edgeworth was of those who ran.

Life resumed. The tabloids bled every good (and bad) story they could out of every aspect of the affair—be it Magnifi's death, Zak's disappearance, or Wright's disbarment—then let the carcass fall to the dust as they tracked new prey into different territory. The world forgot Phoenix Wright in all his prior fame and current infamy, but from the man's silence and almost uncanny determination and ability to avoid Spark and any other reporter, Spark assumed that was what Wright wanted.

Life resumed. Magnifi was dead. Zak Gramarye was truly, completely gone. Thalassa had "vanished." Of Troupe Gramarye, all that remained was Valant. Just… Valant. And Valent (just Valent) spent his time alone in Troupe Gramarye's studio, windows shut and door locked, waiting for the crowds and reporters' siege to trickle away. Spark could only wonder if Trucy would become a magician when she grew up wherever she was now and follow in Troupe Gramarye's footsteps. After meeting Miles Edgeworth, Spark almost hoped she wouldn't.

Life resumed. Edgeworth's phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing, and one day, Spark stopped calling. An interview would do no good this late after the fact, anyhow.

Life resumed. Spark woke up each day, investigated, wrote, investigated some more, published articles, slept, and repeated. Somewhere along the way, Spark thought that maybe, _maybe_ he was being watched—but then he shook the feeling away, grinned wider to whoever was his poor interviewee this time, and pressed harder. He never used to smile like that, Spark thought when he looked at the picture about his column in the newspaper. If Zak, wherever he was, was reading this newspaper, Spark imagined him wearing a smile not unlike the picture's.

Life resumed—but in the way that a heart keeps beating while one's breath is held; gradually slowing, gradually dying. So in the end, life didn't resume at all.

And then Shadi died.

Things happened fast. There was Shadi on Spark's doorstep, just like Zak had been the day Trucy was born and the night Thalassa "vanished." Shadi and Phoenix in the Borscht Bowl Club. Shadi in the morgue from blunt force trauma to the forehead. Spark's article on Phoenix Wright, The Attorney Who Forged and now The Attorney Who Killed. There was a trial. There was a turnabout. There was a conviction. Spark's article on Kristoph Gavin, The Attorney Who Killed And Had The Nerve To Send His Protégé To Defend The Man He Framed.

There was Pal Meraktis, dead by his own manipulative nurse. There was a Romein LeTouse, dead by Gavin's brother's best friend.

There was Drew Misham, dead by his past.

And then finally, there was Spark Brushel, lone observer of the world, standing on the witness stand.

It all came down to him behind that witness stand and Apollo Justice behind the defense bench. From that prison cell, to the broken beer bottles, to the secrets Zak wouldn't share, it all came down to Apollo Justice. And somehow, it seemed to Spark that Justice didn't just stand—Justice was _standing _and_ fighting_ in the way that Miles Edgeworth had said some people of the court of the world did. It was there, looking at Justice's rolled-up sleeves, that Spark had to admit to himself that sometime, long ago, he'd said he wanted to find secrets, clutch them, polish them, and release them to the world. And that now he was doing quite a lot of finding and clutching and polishing and not all that much releasing, and no amount of mint would solve that now.

Perhaps because Spark never had any secrets of his own, so he'd dove into the very essence of lying and wrapped it around him, and found that the secrets had, upon his learning of them, become his own. That those secrets had seeped through his skin, stained into his foolish grin that he'd learned from Zak, who'd learned it from the stage. Too late he'd realized that he'd never really cared about the truth—not compared to Justice, not compared to Wright, and not compared to Miles Edgeworth.

_A magician never reveals his secrets._

_But no matter who knows it, the truth remains._

Whatever "truth" was.

Was it truth that Spark was a witness? Was it truth that Zak was merely smoke and mirrors, that he always had been and always would be the Shadi who wore ragged clothes that befit the street thug he was? Or that Zak would always run from the Shadi who'd magicked candy wrappers away and told the secrets after, the Shadi who'd been in that jail cell all those years ago? Or that Zak would always run from his past, taking a bow in a prison cell to leave behind his first life, melting into the LA streets to leave behind his second?

Was it truth that Wright would always be the jaded poker player he'd become? Or was it the other way around, and Wright, no matter what clothes he wore or what job he took, would always be the bright-eyed lawyer who'd foolishly accepted forged evidence? Did people never change, and Trucy Gramarye would always be a child of magic, born to run like her parents, hiding behind confetti and spotlights and smiles from the stage?

Maybe the truth remained, and maybe it was truth that people never changed.

That's what it had been, Spark would think when he watched Vera Misham emerge, eyes wide and hands shaking, from the hospital doors; Apollo at her side, his sharp eyes trained on Vera's careful steps, while Trucy bounced down the sidewalk with her own smile wide on her face; and Phoenix Wright stood perfectly still on the entrance stairs with his cell phone in his hand. It had been a magician's secret, a remaining truth, and a last testament to Magnifi's words: _People never change._

But even if it had been a magician's secret, a remaining truth, and a last testament… it was over now.

Vera Misham was standing in the sunlight, as she hadn't done since her kidnapping as a child. Trucy Gramarye—no, Trucy _Wright_ was smiling, her eyes crinkling in the corners with mirth no stage could give her. In her pocket was the rights to the Gramarye magic tricks, that last treasure Zak had finally stopped running for to give as a final gift to his baby girl. Phoenix Wright stood behind her, his jaw set in a firm line not of the lazy pianist of the Borscht Bowl Club, and not of the attorney at law, but of someone in between, completely different, and infinitely better.

And in his hand was his phone. Not an attorney's badge or a bottle of grape juice, but his phone. It was ringing. The other side never picked up—hadn't for seven years. So it was ringing, and kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing—

(Because, for the record, even if people never change—)

—and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and—

"Miles Edgeworth speaking."

(—"They Keep Trying," end quote.)


End file.
